Thermo Scientific Pierce™ Silver Stain for Mass Spectrometry is a complete kit for the rapid and sensitive silver staining of proteins in polyacrylamide gels and the efficient destaining of excised gel pieces for mass spectrometry analysis.

Silver staining of 2D gels is an important intermediate step in a set of procedures that leads to identification of specific proteins in the proteome by mass fingerprinting methods. The Pierce™ Silver Stain protocol provides, flexibility, reliability, and robustness for applications such as MALDI-MS.

Highlights

Sensitivity—detect proteins at sub-nanogram level

Clear background—our silver staining kits are designed to produce intensely-stained protein gels with very low background color, shading, or anomalies

Robust performance—reagents and protocols are formulated to help yield excellent staining results across wide-ranging differences in user technique

Gel compatible—staining performance is very good with a variety of commercial precast mini-gels and SDS-PAGE buffer-systems

Workflow compatible—our mild chemical formulations help ensure compatibility with mass spectrometry, sequencing, and other downstream procedures that depend on destaining and protein recovery

Protocol

The easy to perform protocol takes about 1hr. Additionally, the protocol is flexible–fix gel for 15 to 30 minutes or overnight without any affect on staining performance; stain for 1 to 30 minutes (typically 2 to 3 minutes).

Sensitivity

The easy to perform protocol takes about 1hr. Additionally, the protocol is flexible–fix gel for 15 to 30 minutes or overnight without any affect on staining performance; stain for 1 to 30 minutes (typically 2 to 3 minutes).

Protocol

The protocol has been optimized for flexibility by allowing short or overnight gel fixation and staining steps without affecting staining performance (sensitivity or clarity). A short (one-minute) sensitization step, performed after gel fixation, enables results that are free of the characteristically dark or blotchy backgrounds often seen with homemade or other commercially available silver stains. This feature is beneficial when performing densitometric analysis of silver stained gels.

Sensitivity

In standard mini gels, proteins are detectable at greater than 0.25 ng per band or spot.

Sensitivity

The SilverXpress® kit may also be used for detecting nanogram concentrations of DNA that cannot be detected using ethidium bromide. It is five-times more sensitive than ethidium bromide, detecting as little as <0.5 ng of 50 bp DNA.